Whittemore, lighting his pipe. "It's going to give your esthetic
tastes a jar. Look here!"

He seized Gregson by the arm and led him to the door.

The cold northern sky was brilliant with stars. The cabin, its
logs half smothered in dying masses of verdure which had climbed
about it during the summer, was built on the summit of one of the
wind-cropped ridges which are called mountains in the far north.
Into that north swept infinite wilderness, white and gray where
the starlit tops of the spruce rose up at their feet, black in the
distance. From somewhere out of it there came the low, weeping
monotone of surf beating on a shore. Philip, with one hand on
Gregson's shoulder, pointed with the other into the lonely
desolation which they were facing.

"There isn't much between us and the Arctic Ocean, Greggy," he
said. "See that light off there, like a great fire that has half a
mind to die out one minute and flares up the next? Doesn't it
remind you of the night we got away from Carabobo, when Donna
Isobel pointed out our way to us, with the moon coming up over the
mountains as a guide? That isn't the moon. It's the aurora
borealis. You can hear the wash of the Bay down there, and if
you're keen you can catch the smell of icebergs. There's Fort
Churchill--a rifle-shot beyond the ridge, asleep. There's nothing
but Hudson's Bay Company's posts, Indian camps, and trappers
between here and civilization, which is four hundred miles down
there. Seems like a quiet and peaceful country, doesn't it?
There's something about it that makes you thrill and wonder if
this isn't the biggest part of the universe after all. Listen!